Someone has to be buying all the big sacks of flour missing in action from all the local grocery stores. Anyone here “stress baking” or mastering new recipes?
Not me. I don’t bake. But I’m using my oven more for cooking because it’s windy as hell here and my BBQ is hard to light and my sliding glass door is all seized up. Needs new wheels.
Can’t remove the panel because of the wind. A ‘Catch-22’ kind of thing.
We’re baking more because we’re home to be able to monitor it. I take responsibility for buying 2 3-pack strips of yeast earlier this month. Don’t blame us for flour scarcity, though. We are the ones who bought a small bag of teff and a small bag of buckwheat.
Shoot, I forgot to check if there was yeast at the supermarket tonight. I bought a costco sized pack a few years ago, and still have most of it in the freezer.
My middle child has become quite an accomplished cookie and desert baker in the past few years. Been baking something pretty much every day since school turned remote. I’ve had to put my foot down and can only bake minimum batches because I don’t want to come out the other side of the contagion having put on weight.
I have him bought in on figuring out sourdough. I haven’t made sourdough since 2011 when we first moved back to the US. I looked on the shelf and found a baggie with maybe a gram of Carl’s Sourdough Starter from a dec 2010 dried starter. So we will do a flour starter, pour these most likely completely dead yeasties in, and go for it.
For those that don’t know about Carl’s Sourdough, it is one of the coolest things I found on the interwebs about 20 years ago. Long story short, this sourdough starter was born on the Oregon Trail in 1847, and has been continuously propagated since then. Carl used to give it away, and then started mailing dried yeast to those who asked for it. When Carl passed, “Friends of Carl” kept his memory and the yeast alive, and a self addressed stamped envelope sent to Friends of Carl gets you some starter to propagate.
All I know is that it started west in 1847 from Missouri. I would guess with the family of Dr. John Savage as one of his daughters (my great grandmother) was the cook. It came on west and settled near Salem Or. Doc. Savage’s daughter met and married my great grand father on the trail and they had 10 children. It was passed on to me though my parents when they passed away. I am 76 years old so that was some time ago. I first learned to use the starter in a basque sheep camp when I was 10 years old as we were setting up a homestead on the Steens Mountains in southeastern Oregon. A campfire has no oven, so the bread was baked in a Dutch Oven in a hole in the ground in which we had built a fire, placed the oven, scraped in the coals from around the rim, and covered with dirt for several hours. I used it later making bread in a chuck wagon on several cattle drives - again in southeastern Oregon.
As I write this, I think tomorrow I need to get two stamped envelopes, wait for a new batch of sourdough starter from Carl instead of capturing my own.
I’ve been grilling more, baking more, making homemade iced cream more, sleeping more, walking more, surfing the internet more, doing yardwork more, and probably other things.
I’m driving less and working very little.
and I’m ordering some Carl’s sourdough starter, it sounds interesting
You won’t be disappointed. And, hey, it’s the cost of a stamped envelope.
Someone on these boards got Carl’s Sourdough from Carl. I don’t remember who, it was back when I still lived in Shanghai the first time I got some Carl’s. Maybe 2005 of so?
I already had about 20 pounds of various types of flour and a jar of yeast because I’ve been baking off and on for years. I did snag an additional 5 pound bag of white bread flour back in late February, but other than that nothing additional.
Due to food allergies many commercially made breads are off-limits for me, and with bread aisles picked over I often am unable to purchase bread safe for me to eat right now. So on my latest day off I baked bread that is safe for me. I’ve got some vacation time next week and I expect I’ll be making some more loaves for the freezer.
Am getting a bit low on yeast. Not really eager to do a starter. But if I have to I’ll do so.
My mother-in-law (U.S.) sent us (CH) a card to forward to my parents and included an international stamp, which can’t be used here. If I had kept it, I could send it to Carl’s and get sourdough. Might ask my mom. Give her something to do. Also considering trying to make a wild starter, but here we’re too far from the ocean.
I’ve been baking a bit more, mainly because we’re home. I always make quick breads for my husband’s breakfast (banana, banana and dried fig, blueberry, lemon poppy seed) and keep him supplied with homemade cookies.
I also like pie, as does my husband. And cake, especially apple sharlotka.
I’ve baked bread and made sticky buns, but not that often. I do make pizza crust about every other month. And sticky buns. And now I’m going to plan to make pizza crust next week. I have some (2-3 months past the expiration date) dried yeast, which worked out okay last time. And I’ll look at the store for more yeast and flour. I have at least 1 kg of flour besides what’s in the bin, plus the whole wheat and the flour for the pizza crust.
The last time I bought sugar I could only buy 4 kilos at a time, so I think I still have 2 bags. Useful for tapioca and chocolate pudding, as well as baking.
I’m a baker professionally, although I’m out of work for now because the cafe I work in is closed for the duration.
I didn’t bake at home that much because, well, I could get what I might want from work. But now I’ve done bread and biscuits, giving some to my mom, one of my sisters, and eating some myself. I can get baked goods at the store, but this passes the time.
I have def been doing lots of cooking, pots of spaghetti sauce, heaps of pulled pork, pita chips, a meatloaf, and today it will be a mess of bbq sauce. But I haven’t gotten to any baking yet. I was planning on banana bread, certain I had 5 black bananas in my freezer. I was mistaken. And bummed. You can’t go fetch black bananas after all!
And while I am feeling the urge to make some bread, our weather has turned suddenly sunny and warm, so I’m out in my garden instead!
But once the spring rain returns, I’ll probably do some baking, most likely baguette!
I wish I were, but because of my type-II diabetes* I can’t eat carbs without spiking my blood glucose sky-high.So in the midst of all this, no comfort food like pizza, spaghetti or fresh bread. 
*diabetes, obese and over 55, all risk factors for increased chance of death from covid-19 :eek:
One of the regulars here (can’t remember who right now) has been posting this method of starting your own sourdough starter: Sourdough Starter Recipe | King Arthur Baking
Lumpy, Google for information about reducing the glycemic load of pasta–basically, cook in, cool it, and reheat it. This apparently decreases the bioavailability of the carbohydrates.
I’ve been baking a ton. First, I have two teenage boys that are snacking their way through the pandemic. We’ve made a few batches of cookies, apple hand pies, banana muffins, and bagels. Tonight we’re making quesadillas with homemade tortillas. Second, bread hasn’t been easy to come by around here, so if we want bread or rolls, we make them ourselves. I have the time now and it’s better than searching around at various stores for them. When I started doing pandemic prep back in February, extra flour and yeast was something I definitely stocked up on.
If you need flour, yeast, etc I came across this site–although I have never used it. They sell in larger quantities mostly and UPS shipping charges are going to be expensive (no free shipping):
I thought of this too late to buy it. My main motivation is that bread runs out quickly, too. I’m really going to miss Pancake Sundays.
Mrs. FtG is on a cooking tear. Big pots of soups, protein bars, cinnamon rolls, etc. This morning she made English muffin bread from a recipe she got from a neighbor 40 years ago. (Miss ya, Art!)
So this afternoon she was trying to convince me that I really wanted a chocolate cake. She just made me one for St. Valentine’s Day so I’m good for several more months. You gotta space those sorts of things out, by a lot.
We’re actually eating more healthily: soups, stews, etc., and only two meals a day. I’ve made my killer biscuits (but I do that anyway), and I’ve made a couple batches of my killer oatmeal cookies. Made a loaf of bread, as related in another post, and made cornmeal pancakes on one Sunday. Then I ran low on flour, but have now scored a 5 lb bag. Tomorrow we’re having cornbread, and I’m making a frittata with Italian sausage.
I was given a bread machine for Christmas, but wasn’t eating a lot of bread. Used to make two loaves a week of Jim Lahey’s recipe. I had an old bread machine 20 years ago that was very basic, so wasn’t overexcited about this one. But it’s a beautiful thing. Now the big danger is too little gym and too many delicious breads.